Cyberbullying in Childhood and Adolescence: Assessment, Negative Consequences and Prevention Strategies

Today, a substantial part of many young people’s everyday lives take place online. One of the possible downsides of peer interaction on the Internet is cyberbullying. This form of bullying is conducted through modern information and communication technology and can involve for instance hurtful photos, videos and texts that are uploaded to pages on the Internet and offensive text messages. Cyberbullying is a relatively new phenomenon; therefore, this chapter begins with a short overview of how cyberbullying can be defined and which behaviours it is that are included in this form of aggressive peer interaction. Research shows that being bullied online is associated with several negative consequences such as somatic symptoms and poor body esteem. The chapter therefore includes a section on students’ experiences of and reactions to cyberbullying. A question that is posed in the chapter is: What can be done to counteract cyberbullying? In order to answer this question suggestions given by Swedish youths are presented.

"In this chapter, we propose that features of offline bullying take new forms in the context of cyberbullying. Anonymity and publicity are probably essential prerequisites for creating and fortifying the imbalance of power and repetition of acts of bullying in the cyber context, which indicates that researchers should try to adapt and use Olweus’s definition of offline bullying for cyberbullying. Research presented in this chapter furthermore shows that being involved in cyberbullying incidents have harmful consequences, for example, being the victim of cyberbullying is associated with physical/bodily symptoms, poor body esteem and poor body image. Moreover, perpetrators of cyberbullying exhibit more difficulties in school, show less empathy and a have a higher degree of moral disengagement." (Authors, 149-150)